NEWS . Cocktails With...

Chaka Fattah

U.S. representative, 2nd District; mayoral candidate; Democrat


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Published: Feb 7, 2007

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

It's a day after a New York Times article tried to explain why a seven-term U.S. representative would walk away from a Capitol Hill that his party had just usurped to instead enter the brawl known as his hometown's mayoral race. "As the leader of a city like Philadelphia," Chaka Fattah told them, "I can have a real impact."

This is what Fattah discussed while sitting in the upstairs lounge at Haru, a fashionably glitzy Old City restaurant. Occasionally interrupted by well-wishers attending a networking event — he gets the "Sir" treatment — Fattah rattles off accomplishments including, as picked up by the Times, the Gear Up program to help poor kids get into college through an annual scholarship, and his move to bring low-cost home heating oil to thousands of Philadelphians.

As our drinks arrive (a gin-and-tonic that I'll finish in 20 minutes and an amaretto sour that Fattah doesn't end up touching), it's clear that we're in Fattah's comfort zone. Having won blow-out election after blow-out election — 89 percent? C'mon — he's as polished as an evening-news anchor and confident as Ali. Which is why the question at hand is about the dangers of complacency. Specifically, whether it's a good idea to rest on his polling-number laurels, letting his opponents beat one another up as they try to distance themselves from the pack — as he already has.

"If there's anybody out there who thinks I'm not going to win because I didn't give it my best, they're fooling themselves," he says with a mischievous grin. "They'll need a different strategy to beat me."But when it comes to strategy, Fattah, 50, tries to measure his words, but it's hard to pull back when you're trying to explain that you have the best campaign operation in the field and that your organization will, without a doubt, drive you to victory.

Since we're talking casually, I'll paraphrase a bold statement that he makes on, and later off, the record: Not much, if anything, will change between now and May. As in, he's not too worried about one of the other candidates, even his congressional peer Bob Brady, mounting enough of a charge to take the Democratic nomination. (If polished confidence is your thing, this is your man.) And when he gets in?

"We have 25 percent poverty. That's a reality that should sober everybody up. And we have the lowest rate of residents who graduated college: Seattle has 58 percent, we only have 18," he says. "In Washington, you're elected to be one of a group, but I have a sense of perspective of what leadership's about.

"We can improve and transform this city in a non-incremental way to improve the life chances of the people here. If people feel that they're less than the rest of society, then they'll act in self-fulfilling ways. We need to bring middle-class expectations to working-class families. I'm not convinced that what people see as intractable problems can't be fixed."

With that, he offers an invitation to sit in this same spot, in four years, so we can discuss whether he lived up to that quote, before heading into a networking event where everybody will want to network with him.